Mahindra Launches ‘NU IQ’ Global SUV Platform, Targets Mainstream Disruption

Mahindra & Mahindra has unveiled a new global SUV platform, branded Nu IQ, which will underpin its next generation of models as the company looks to extend its dominance in “core SUVs” from India to international markets.

“For us to be able to do that, we are looking at putting together a brand-new platform built to totally new standards in terms of performance, built on innovation which is borne out of our design centers in the UK and crafted and brought to life in MRV and infused with intelligence which will showcase each and every product coming out of this platform,” said Nalinikanth Gollagunta, CEO – Auto Sector, Mahindra & Mahindra.

Positioning NU IQ as the foundation for Mahindra’s global ambitions, Gollagunta stressed the company’s intent to go beyond incremental improvements. “We are going to be doing that by pushing the boundaries of what’s possible,” he said.

Autocar Professional had exclusively reported in September 2024 that the company is working on a new flexible vehicle architecture called the NFA, which is likely to spawn over half a dozen new SUVs. 

The new platform builds on Mahindra’s disciplined focus on what it calls the core SUV recipe. “We take the entire universe of all the UVs. We take out MPVs out of it… and any kind of hatchback-derived crossovers, we take it out. That to us is core recipes as we look at it,” Gollagunta explained.

This strategy, he argued, has already transformed Mahindra’s position in India. “If you step back and look at 2022, core SUVs used to be less than 20 percent of the market. But the interesting thing was, the customer movements were changing… In fact, if you see the overall growth of the passenger vehicle market, almost all of it was driven by the core SUV market,” he said. Today, core SUVs account for 30 percent of the passenger vehicle industry, and Mahindra sees the remaining 70 percent as white space.

Globally too, Mahindra sees disruption potential. “The premium SUVs, which we used to call next-in-class in India, the features they used to have, that is just about 5 percent of the market. The rest 95 percent of the market is waiting to be disrupted, to be given next-in-class features in mainstream SUVs. The playbook we have taken in India… is the same playbook we are going to start to play out in the rest of the world,” Gollagunta said.

With NU IQ architecture, Mahindra is looking at markets nearly double the size of India’s SUV industry. “It is a huge opportunity and the platform we are putting out, our aspirations are fully global at this point in time,” Gollagunta added.